This Day, That Year: Dec 17

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

In December 1987, China's first domestically built arc-welding robot was developed, as seen in the item from China Daily. It has been widely used in the manufacturing sector.

For the past few years, robots have been replacing workers on assembly lines across China, especially in the manufacture of automobiles and home appliances.

Since 2013, China has been the world's largest industrial robot market.

China purchased 135,000 industrial robots last year, according to a report released by the China Robot Industry Alliance. It was the sixth consecutive year that China topped industrial robot sales.

In 2016, the central government unveiled a development plan for the robotics industry, setting several goals to be achieved by 2020.

They include establishing robotics companies that can be globally competitive, and hitting a national robot density of more than 150. The number was 97 in 2017.

Robot density is the number of multipurpose industrial robots per 10,000 people employed in manufacturing.

In the Made in China 2025 industrial policy, the central government identifies the robotics industry as a strategically important sector.

Last year, more than 148,000 industrial robots were produced in China, accounting for 38 percent of the global production volume, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed.

Market research company International Data Corp estimates that China will have spent more than $59 billion on robotics and related services next year.

In 2016, home appliance manufacturer Midea Group bought Germany's Kuka, one of the world's leading makers of industrial robots, to promote automation.

As technology advances, robots are predicted to lead the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, replacing more than 5 million jobs around the world by 2020, a report released in 2016 by the World Economic Forum said.

Such widespread use of robots may offer a solution to a looming labor shortage for an aging China.

Express delivery companies like JD have already incorporated airborne drones into their delivery networks.